As integrated circuit (IC) processing technologies continue to improve, the number of devices that may be incorporated into such ICs also increases. Although increasing the number of devices in an IC typically results in greater performance, the increased number of devices is too often accompanied by an increase in heat generation. Unfortunately, such heat generation can be detrimental to IC's and especially to processors unless the heat is dissipated or otherwise drawn away from the IC.
Heat sinks are devices that are often used to promote heat dissipation from ICs. In the past, when ICs packages were relatively small, the size of the heat sinks used to cool such ICs was roughly the same as the size of the IC package that the heat sink was designed to cool. This made the processes of connecting and removing the IC package to and from a printed circuit board socket manageable. However, with the increased heat generation accompanying today's processors for example, the physical size of the heat sinks required to dissipate such heat has also increased dramatically. Unfortunately, such large heat sinks can easily eclipse the size of the IC packages they were intended to cool, making insertion and removal of the ICs from a circuit board or system difficult.
In modern day computing systems for example, heat sinks are typically mounted on processor packages they are designed to cool. Typically, these processor/heat sink assemblies are then connected and disconnected from circuit boards by way of a releasable processor socket sometimes referred to as a zero insertion force (ZIF) socket. Unfortunately, however, separate tools are often required to engage/disengage a processor/heat sink assembly from a corresponding socket. This can cause installation difficulties and resulting manufacturing delays for motherboard and OEM system integrators when the required tool is not readily locatable. Moreover, even with the requisite tool available, due to the large size of today's heat sink assemblies, obtaining access to the release mechanisms of the processor socket can be difficult and time consuming.